MISC: The Girl Who Saved the World Re: racc-not

Arthur Spitzer arspitzer at earthlink.net
Fri Oct 2 13:12:27 PDT 2015


The best person to ask if your posts aren't getting to RACC
would be Russ Allbery (e-mail: eagle at eyrie.org)...

Arthur "Posting this to RACC.." Spitzer



On Oct 1, 2015, at 5:54 PM, George Phillies wrote:

> Hello?
> 
> Once upon a time, rather before dinosaurs roamed the earth, I posted a segment of a novel to racc to see if I would get comments.  That novel was This Shining Sea.  In any event, I have been trying to do this again, after many lost years, but racc has been entirely uncooperative, or I do not know the Ultimate Password, which is of course 100% valid whenever a password is needed.
> 
> The following is the opening of The Girl Who Saved the World, the prequel to This Shining Sea.  Comments would of course be welcome:
> 
> Title: The Girl Who Saved the World.
> 
> Text copyright © 2015 George Phillies
> 
> Meet Eclipse.
> She's pretty, hardworking, bright, self-reliant, good with tools.  She’s everything a twelve-year old girl should be.  She also flies, reads minds, and is not afraid of necessary violence.
> 
> Now she’s procured the Key to Paradise. And everyone in the world will be happy to kill her to get their hands on it.
>> 
> Chapter One
> Kniaz Kang's Shanghai Marco Polo
> North Cosmopolis, Washington
> January 10, 2018
> 
> The sign in the parking lot announced: Kniaz Kang's Shanghai Marco Polo. Featuring the finest in Chinese, Italian, and Russian Cuisine.  Invented Here -- General Tso's Pizza! Invented Here -- Il Professore's Dessert Pizza!  It was 7:30 in the morning. The sun barely glowed over the South Cosmopolis horizon, even at a restaurant atop a hill. Inside, Kniaz Kang himself -- a man who was not a prince and whose name was not actually Kang -- supervised the morning help in readying his restaurant for another day.  The front windows were filled with his regulars, early risers and High School students from Atomic Tech down the street, all enjoying his superb breakfasts.  After all, hash, egg rolls, borscht, and pizza were in large part based on chopping many things very finely, a skill that his employees denied was a gift.
> 
> In the morning he served High School students, and some of their teachers, though not in the same room. The isolated corner window was always reserved for the Gang of Three or So.   Teranike publically denied being what Kang knew she was, namely a Polarian from Otherearth stranded when her empire closed the WorldGate.  She had taken a room upstairs, did heavy physical work for the Restaurant with no complaint or sign of fatigue, and did not emphasize what she had in her suitcases.   Dorothy Elizabeth Schumacher was North Cosmopolis's best-known public persona.  She had not planned to be public.  However, when the agent of the League of Terran Justice walked up to the front entrance of her High School, started screaming "Down with Private Education",  and prepared to shoot up student automobiles, she did what any persona should.  In her case, it was put up her force field, run directly in front of the agent thus taking some dozens of rounds square in the chest, and flying -- literally -- tackle the loon into a wall. She was unhurt. The loon was in a prison hospital.  Dorothy confessed to being the known persona Silk, until then most noted for having rescued dogs, small children, and a moose from various not-quite frozen ponds.
> 
> It was not until the next Summer that the Greater Cosmopolis Séance and Channeling Society put her on the national news.  The Society had decided to channel the greatest motion picture actor in the history of Oregon.  They expected to speak to Stanford Smith, who had made more than 200 westerns and gone on to be Grand Trademaster of All Liavek. The Society's survivors were not quite clear on what went wrong.  They obtained a physical materialization, not the expected disembodied voice.  The materialization was a two hundred yard tall reptile with radioactive flame breath. It flattened the first three persona teams that tried to stop it.  Then Silk appeared on the scene.  Only if you looked very carefully, Kang recalled, would you observe that she was now wearing a force field bracer.  Any number of people noticed that she was now armed not with her usual Ruggels 0.50 revolver but with a Krell disruptor pistol.  The flame breath had no effect on her.  Her first shot took down the creature, who reverted into the Society's Occult Master.  Asked why she hadn't mentioned having the extremely rare and powerful Krell weapon, she said that she hadn't had it.  The now very ex-boyfriend had lent it to her.  He now had it back.  They’d agreed, when they broke up, that they would forget each other.  A mentalist had ensured that she had no remaining memories of him. No one else had known that she had had a boyfriend, not even her parents, so questions about him remained unanswered.
> 
> The usual third at her table was the seventh-grade boy who, if pressed, claimed he was Silk's heroic side-kick, there to protect her from truly dangerous villains.  He had his trusty slingshot for that.  He confessed that he never carried his slingshot.  Someone could get hurt.  Today he was missing in action.
> 
> Kang got no farther in reviewing his customers when the doors slammed in.  Running through them at top speed was Kang's number-two man, Wang, the Imperturbable.
> 
> "Lord Kang!  Lord Kang!" Wang shouted in Mandarin.  "The Sun!  The Sun!  There is a central eclipse!"
> 
> Kang tapped the computer screen above his chopping block.  Headlines scrolled across the screen.  There was much news, but the astral omen was not yet reported.  He tapped the screen again. The All-Continent News Network was usually fast off the start. There was the "Special News Bulletin" warning.  The text alternated every few seconds between orange lettering on a blue field and violet lettering on a yellow field, colors reserved for the most serious emergencies. A half dozen split-screens came up.  "First seen ten minutes ago in London...Observers in Athens heard celestial trumpets...Moscow reports the sky has turned imperial purple...We now join reporter Vera Durand.  Where are you, Vera?"
> 
> "This is Vera Durand." The reporter's voice was sharp and clear.  Behind her were jagged rocks and a smooth marble terrace.  At the center of the terrace was a staircase, leading down.  "I am now broadcasting from Atlanticea.  The sounds you hear behind me are the waves of the Atlantic.  Atlanticea has just  been raised from the ocean by the power of the Holy Namestone. Not one hour ago, a figure appeared above the entrance to the Great Maze and announced she would be contesting possession of the Namestone.   The island promptly rose to greet her. She, or perhaps he, has already entered the Maze.  All-Channel broadcasting of the contest by the Namestone itself will begin momentarily."
> 
> "Vera, who is the challenger?" network lead announcer Richard Markovian asked.
> 
> "We don't know, Richard," Durand answered calmly, "The Namestone has said nothing.  There were rumors that the League of Nations Elite Strike Team was going to try, very soon, to recover the Namestone, but the solitary figure who entered the Maze is not a League Operative.  The Namestone translocated us here after she entered.  I had no interview with her.  I don't know why the Maze deemed her -- assuming 'her' is correct -- qualified to challenge."
> 
> Kang returned to his chopping, interrupted by instructions to his assistants.  "Benito, just keep making pizza shells.  We're going to have a huge business today.  Nikolai, that cabbage was a bit mature; steam it an extra ten minutes. Wang, lower the sports view screens. Almost everyone will want to watch.  Oh, there's the announcement, Governor Molnar is cancelling public school sessions; 'After all, the kids will be paying absolutely no attention'. Schools stay open so children have a place to be if parents are working.  Put the announcement up on the Big Sign." Kang looked over his cash register.
> 
> "Ah, Miss Schumacher.  The usual breakfast, the usual tab.  You didn't know about this in advance?" Kang asked.
> "Or are you the next challenger?"
> 
> "Me? " She answered good-naturedly.  "I just have a few gifts. If I flew to Atlantis, the Namestone wouldn't give me the time of day.  You want to get gossip about this, ask the people who take your private classes."  Kang lectured, several evenings a week, on the hidden energies that underlay all gifts.  His large classes were televised.  He also gave entirely private classes to select students, many of whom were on their national persona teams, and some of whom were said to be wanted by members of those persona teams.  Registration lists for private classes were well-kept secrets.  "I'm going to Tech's library to study.  Thank you again for breakfast."
> 
> "You are always welcome here," Kang answered. The sports viewscreens were now showing the Namestone's video broadcast of the challenger, someplace in the Maze.  The view was always from behind.  The challenger's face was never seen.  "Miss Schumacher, you are a woman of iron will.  There hasn't been a real challenge since that chess player, 40 years ago.  You aren't going to watch?"
> 
> "Kniaz Kang, whoever it is, she is going to be shredded, degraded, hideously wounded, and in the end beaten to death and blown to pieces. Unless the solid shadows eat her. I couldn't stand to watch," Silk said.
> 
> "I can't, either," Kang answered.  "Which is why I am not facing a video screen, and why there is no sound behind the counter.  The contest will be over this afternoon, if not sooner.  At three o'clock that will be bright sunlight everywhere in the world when the Maze marks its newest prey.  Then I can watch the news again."
> 
> * * * * *
> Late afternoon. Kang stood in his restaurant, intervening as need be to maintain the flow of food and drink to his customers.  He’d opened both kitchens, called in all the cooks and part-timers, but keeping ahead of the take-out and delivery crowd had been a struggle.  All that time, he never looked at a video screen.  Someplace out in the Atlantic, someone was about to die, horribly, pursuing a hopeless quest older than history.  He couldn’t hide from the windows, though, windows that were brighter when the defenders of the Maze did well, dimmer when the challenger advanced.  The same was true all around the world.
> 
> Suddenly all went black outside.  He couldn’t resist glancing at the news feed. “Bangkok - sky is pitch black. Rio de Janiero - the sun just went out.  Vienna - only street lights illuminate the Ringstrasse.”
> The video could be heard in the far distance.  “This is Vera Durand on Atlantis.  It’s a planetary total eclipse.  Not three minutes ago, the challenger was losing in hand-to-hand combat.  She was grappled and unable to break free.  Suddenly everything went dark.”
> 
> “Vera,” Richard Karkovian asked, “The Maze must have won.  Where is the Sun?”
> 
> “Here on Atlantis, even the stars have gone dark.  You only see me because my trusty cameraman has his own light source.  Wait, I’m getting video from the maze again.”
> 
> Kang stared at the screen, unable to help himself.  All activity in the kitchen ground to a stop.  The screens showed a long, white marble corridor, illumined by two rows of unblinking cressets, flames that burned without pause or flicker.  A figure could be seen limping away from the camera, whatever the Maze used for cameras, toward an open door.  Who was it?  What was going on? By now the guardian must have killed the challenger, but that was the challenger, still barely on her feet.  Kang held his breath.
> 
> The figure crossed the threshold. Instantly, the room beyond was flooded with sunlight, sunlight visible nowhere else in the world.  The point of view shifted.
> 
> The challenger stood in the Tomb of the Martyr, the final resting place of the man who had brought the Namestone to Earth.  There was the Martyr himself, lying in state atop his sarcophagus, his corpse unchanged over the thousands of years he had waited.  Above his hands floated a glowing sphere of crystalline sky, the brightest of cerulean blues.  He held the Namestone, The Artifact That Grants Every Wish, The Key to Paradise.
> 
> The figure walked slowly across the polished stone floor. A woman, Kang decided, and very slim. Her garb was torn and stained with blood.  Sweat plastered her hair to her scalp. Stains and rends in the fabric vanished as she approached the Martyr.    Her hair fluffed out, revealing short, platinum-white, perfectly cut curls. Down from the ceiling floated a gray cape. It folded over her shoulders, draping perfectly, its fall extending almost to her ankles.  She reached down and tugged at the fabric. The cape flared, revealing a sigil, a solid circle overlapping a sun in glory.
> 
> She reached the Martyr.  “I am here,” she announced. Her voice, thought Kang was an upper soprano, its tones limpidly clear.  “I have read The Copper Book of Harvest Stars and obeyed its mandates. I’m here for the Namestone.”
> 
> “Are you here to take the Holy Namestone, the Key to Paradise?”  The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.
> 
> “I am here to ask you for the Namestone, if I’m worthy.  So speaks the Copper Book,” she answered.  Kang listened to the voice.  A human female, a young woman from the purity of her voice’s tones.
> 
> “Speak your name,” the voice commanded.
> 
> “Eclipse is my persona.  I am glory herself.”
> 
> “Then reach out, Eclipse, and take the Namestone.”  Eclipse cleared her throat.  Someday, Kang thought, her children will cower in terror at that harmless sound.  “Then reach out, Eclipse, and I will give you the Namestone.”
> 
> Eclipse leaned forward.  The Namestone rolled out of the Martyr’s hands into Eclipse’s.
> 
> The cheers from the restaurant audience were deafening.  Even the oldest patrons would not have watched Jackie Fisher and the combined Grand Fleet being sunk, the last time a serious effort had been made to recover the stone, but most had seen that defeat on period motion pictures.  The chess player who forty years ago had won three games and quit while ahead was viewed as exhibiting another of his fabled eccentricities.  For this day, mankind had waited thousands of years.
> Beyond the Sarcophagus were stairs leading up.  Eclipse began her climb out of the Maze.
> 
> The sky outside the restaurant flared to bright daylight.  Video split screens showed the same all around the world. From a total planetary eclipse, now there was total planetary daylight.
> 
> “This is Vera Durand on Atlantis.  It’s full daylight here. I’m standing on a ledge close to the Grand Exit, waiting for Eclipse to appear.  I’ll do my best to get an interview,”  she said.
> 
> There was a slight popping noise.  Twenty feet to the side of the stairs, a tall, blonde woman wearing plate mail and holding a flaming sword had appeared.  “Richard,” Durand said, “that’s unmistakably Valkyria, lead persona with the League of Nations Peace Enforcers.  I must be surrounded by her invisible teammates.  Valkyria? Would you care to tell the audience how you feel at this historic moment?”
> Valkyria kept her eyes on the stairs.  There came the faintest sound of tearing cloth.  Standing twenty feet on the other side of the stairs was a short, solidly built man dressed entirely in black: Black boots, black trousers and belt, black shirt and vest, and wide-brimmed, floppy, solid-black straw hat.
> 
> “That’s the Screaming Skull, himself,” Vera said, not that any of her viewers did not already know.  “Now a Lord of Eternity is here.”
> 
> Eclipse came up the stairs from the Tomb.  The Namestone was not to be seen.
> 
> “Miss Eclipse,” Durand started, “what are your plans for…”
> 
> “Be still, Durand. There is important business.”  The Screaming Skull’s voice was as chill as a tomb. Durand found herself frozen in place, unable to move or speak.
> 
> “Where is she, little girl?” Valkyria snapped.  “Where is the bearer of the Holy Namestone?”  Kang stared sharply at the video.  The Peace Enforcers must have been en route while Eclipse confronted the Martyr, if they did not know her name.
> 
> “I’m about twenty feet in front of you,” Eclipse answered.
> 
> “Aren’t you … isn’t the real Bearer a bit taller?” Valkyria asked.
> 
> “I am tall.  Wait! Isn’t the real Valkyria a bit less … pudgy?”  Eclipse responded. Valkyria’s nostrils flared.  There was nothing, Kang thought, like a friendly, considerate opening to potentially delicate negotiations. “I mean, how do you keep fitting into that armor?”
> 
> “You!”  Valkyria shouted. “Inform the Bearer.  She is to turn the Holy Namestone over to League of Nations Supreme Chancellor Lars Holmgren. Immediately! That is a direct order!”
> 
> “I am the Bearer.  If you wanted the Namestone, you should have walked the Maze first and taken it,” Eclipse answered
> 
> “Give it to me! Now! The League has decreed: The Namestone is the property of the world.” Valkyria screamed.
> 
> “Give it to you? You and which army?” Eclipse said languidly.
> 
> “This one.” Valkyria waved her fingers.  Most of the League of Nations Elite Strike Force appeared at her back.  They began to fan out, left and right, moving toward Eclipse.
> 
> “That’s far enough,” Eclipse announced.  The Strike Force kept advancing.
> 
> Eclipse gestured, ending with hand facing skyward.  The Namestone appeared, its cerulean fire burning a few inches above her palm.  The Namestone’s tuneless tune was heard distantly.  Eclipse, Kang saw, had brought up her own body aura, a color not different from the Namestone’s, and what sounded to be her own theme music, clearly audible in Durand’s microphone.
> 
>  “Behold the Holy Namestone.  Come no closer, or face my gifts.” Someone, Kang thought, had given her superb training in rhetoric.   “The Namestone is mine. I took it.  I’m keeping it,” Eclipse said.
> 
> “You defy the League!  International law specifies: The League of Nations owns the Namestone. Hand it over!” Valkyria shouted.
> 
> “You know the Maze Rule: Namestone belongs to he who takes it. I took it,” Eclipse answered calmly.
> 
> “The Namestone is too dangerous for mortals,” the Screaming Skull announced. “Give it to me, or face my wrath.”
> 
> “Team! The Namestone is indestructible! Kill her!” Valkyria drew her explosive throwing katana.  That weapon, Kang thought, packs the energy density of a star-core bomb, albeit one with very localized effects. She threw it at Eclipse. The Screaming Skull gestured.  Black hail fell around the Namestone-Bearer.   Lights and sounds marked the rest of the League Elite Team launching their attacks.  Someone, Kang decided, was protecting Durand and the island, both of which would otherwise have been obliterated by the energies being unleashed.  Eclipse simple stood there, her shields unwavering as attack after attack struck her.
> Eclipse flicked her wrist.  The Namestone vanished. She stepped into a royal blue waterfall, unseen bells tolling, leaving behind a vacant flight of marble stairs.   Teleport, Kang thought, the waterfall and bells are the material traces of her teleport.  And someplace in Europe, a team of teleport blockers are somewhere between having splitting headaches and being little clouds of incandescent plasma.
> 
> 
> 
> Chapter Two
> The Invisible Fortress
> Evening
> January 11, 2018
> 
> I awoke at half past dark.  To put it mildly, I hurt.  Some places hurt even more than others. Yes, I was doing mind control on myself, so I didn’t exactly feel the pain. That meant I could sleep, but I still knew I hurt. A lot. “Hurt” was still better than the alternative, which did not involve being alive.  I’d landed the right way when I was thrown into the wall, missed getting a disabling concussion, and dodged getting gutted by the fellow with the sword.
> 
> One of the times when I woke up, the healing matrix  prompted me to ramp the mind control further down, so it could tell exactly where I had been injured.  I overdid it. I cut the mind control off.  Incredible pain swallowed me. I burst into sobs and uncontrollable tears.  After a few minutes I remembered I could simply ramp control back up.  By then I was soaked in sweat. The matrix was putting me back together, but it had its own order of doing things, and some of the reasons I really hurt were late on the list.
> 
> The healing matrix was fixing me, but…oh right, healing matrix. I summoned the glyph for its rules engine.  Nothing in violet, nothing that was killing me despite the matrix.  Of course, the matrix should have dragged me conscious if I were dying, and it hadn’t.  Nothing blue, long-term near-death threat.  Red warnings? Let’s see.  Three broken ribs, stitched by telekinesis.  My right shoulder? Nothing had broken, but bits of force field were holding things where they belonged while the matrix forced repairs. Low level internal bleeding from high-impact collisions?  That had been fixed.  Gold - a black eye, a few bone bruises, but I’ve been here before, just not so many ways at the same time.  Green – slices, scrapes, abrasions … my skin is being returned to perfection as I lie in bed.  My face was cleaned up before I faced the Martyr, but not the rest of me.  The matrix was healing everything, way faster than I’d heal naturally. I’d still need a week to recover.
> 
> Major knock-down, drag-out fight?  That was the cue.  I was home and safe. I dropped my mind out-of-body. Actually, the preset really did not give me much choice in that.  I had done mind control on myself, to ensure that whenever I was in a really serious fight, escaped, and got back here safe, I would for sure do certain things, whether I wanted to or not. If someone had planted mind controls on me, I probably broke them when I left my body behind.  The preset grabbed my gifts and ran a scan fast as thought to see what might have been inserted into my mind-space. Yes, the scan runs at the speed of thought, but it has a lot of mind to scan.  Meanwhile, I hovered above my body, looking into my momentarily sightless silver-gray eyes and platinum-white eyelashes, listening to me breathe, ever so slowly.
> 
> Done. Control of my mind returned to me.  There was a way to break the mind control, if things went wrong, but everything had gone the way it was supposed to.  Mum had been very careful about showing me exactly how to arrange that preset, because potentially it was very dangerous to its user.  I dropped back into my body, wiggled fingers and toes, and blinked twice.  Everything worked.
> 
> Gifts?  I shouldn’t even consider calling any of them.  Not flight.  Not teleportation.  Not any of the neat ways I can seriously wreck things. Not force field – well, there’s a low-level screen tacking my ribs and my shoulder together.  Just before I left Atlanticea I had pushed my shields way deep, much deeper than I had expected to need them, calling my gifts toward their limits. I could go way deep now if I absolutely had to, but if I do I’m going to hurt myself.
> 
> There was a warning flag -- my second-level shields had engaged.
> What?...then I remembered.  It was the most wonderful memory in the world.  Or would have been, if everything didn’t hurt so much, not to mention I was totally exhausted. I’d solved the Maze, the Maze that defeated Julius Caesar and Cortez and Jackie Fisher and the French Imperial Guard.  I’d reached the Tomb, and been given the Namestone, that palm-size sphere of crystalline sky, from the hands of the Martyr.  Finally, I climbed the Outer Stairs, out of the Maze into the waking world, wisps of cloud an incandescent white ahead of me.  I’d recovered the Namestone, something no one else in the history of the world had ever come close to doing.  And I remembered what had happened next.
> 
> At the top of the Outer Stairs I had company.  Waiting for me were Valkyria, the super-heavy combatant of the League of Nations Elite Strike team, and the Screaming Skull, himself. Alas, they weren’t fighting each other, so I couldn’t smile once, duck twice, and flee their island paradise. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. For thousands of years the Namestone has been viewed as the Key to Heaven. The League of Nations has passed any number of decrees claiming it for themselves, just as soon as someone else rescues it from the Maze.  Now I had it, and they all wanted it.
> 
> “Where is she, little girl?  Where is the bearer of the Holy Namestone?”  That had been Valkyria, shouting at me.  Valkyria? Six feet tall, impervium plate battle armor, heavy duty body field, not to mention a flaming sword that was mostly a special effect shrouding a pointblank range plasma attack. Yes, there is also an endarium blade inside the flames. There is a long history of people in plate mail being idiots, and at the moment she was living up to it.   Her long blonde hair fluttered in the sea breeze. Bad form. Mum always said Valkyria should wear her hair short or mound it under her helmet.
> 
> I was a bit miffed.  GR, she does have three-quarters of a foot on me, but ‘little girl’ was still impolite. ‘Little girl’ is not the nicest imaginable greeting.  Valkyria should have been less threatening.  After all, I was carrying the most powerful artifact in the world.
> 
> “I’m twenty feet in front of you,” I answered.
> 
> “Aren’t you … isn’t the real Bearer taller?” Valkyria asked.
> 
> I glowered.  GR, I’m not into my teen growth spurt yet, but it’s not I didn’t pass five feet last year.  “I am tall.” That’s when I ran out of patience.  Not one of these people had even been civil, let alone congratulated me. If she wants to insult me, there’s no reason I can’t return the favor.  “Wait!,” I continued, “Isn’t the real Valkyria a bit less pudgy? I mean, how do they manage to squeeze you into that armor?”  Her nostrils flared. I guess she’s sensitive about that line.
> 
> “You!”  Valkyria shouted. “Inform the Bearer.  She must turn the Holy Namestone over to League of Nations.  At once!  As fast as possible! That is a direct order!” Yes, I could hear her Germanic mindset without reading her mind.  And unless something had gone very wrong, the whole world had watched me do the Maze.  She should have known who I am.
> 
> “I am the Bearer.  If you wanted the Namestone, you should have walked the Maze first and taken it,” I answered.  I confess I was getting a bit nervous that the Screaming Skull was standing there, politely not saying anything.  No, we haven’t met, but when your mother is a persona, you tend to inherit bits of her gift fine structure, enough that he’d eventually figure out whose daughter I am. That would definitely not be good.
> 
> “Give it to me! Now! The League decreed: The Namestone is the property of the world.” Valkyria was used to having her orders obeyed.
> 
> “Give it to you? You and which army?” I asked languidly.  I should have been more polite.  I will not say in my own defense that I was thoroughly exhausted, not to mention the body damage from the hand to hand combat segments.  Old English proverb: Battles are events between inadequate opportunities to rest. I’d expected congratulations.  After all, people had been trying to thread the Lesser Maze for three thousand years, with no success. I’d done it.
> 
> “This one?” She waved her fingers.  What had to be the whole League of Nations Elite Strike Force teleported in at her back.
> 
> The Strike Force began to spread, left and right.  “That’s far enough,”
> I announced.  They kept spreading.
> 
> It’s a very special gesture with hand and wrist. My palm ends up facing skyward, the Namestone burning cerulean a few inches above it, its tuneless tune distantly heard in every ear.  Yes, I did remember to cue my personal theme music and body aura.  No, I can still call on Namestone’s power even if I can’t move.  And, yes, my aura actually is the same blue as the Namestone’s glow.  My platinum blonde hair and pale gray garb go really well with it.
> 
> “I hold the Holy Namestone. Come no farther or face my wrath.”  Mom taught me how to sound truly pompous.  To my surprise, it worked. Europalord did not quite fall on his fat face when he tripped over his own feet.  Of course, he is a Drain, so personal combat training is not quite the issue it is with his team-mates.  His task is to sit there and suck power out of his opponents, incidentally shoving it all into his personal force field.  “The Namestone is mine,” I announced.
> “You’re defying the League!  International law specifies: The League of Nations owns the Namestone. Hand it over!” she shouted.  In retrospect, she might have done better if she’d been a bit more tactful.  She could hardly have done worse.
> 
> “You know the Maze Rule: Namestone belongs to he who takes it. I took it,” I said.
> 
> “Team! The Namestone is indestructible! Kill her!”  Valkyria drew her explosive throwing katana.  Her team launched a totally bizarre mixture of high power attacks.  Not one of them seemed to have noticed that if I died I would drop the Namestone, which would roll back down the Stairs into the Lesser Maze, there to be returned to the Martyr. Perhaps Valkyria counted on the explosion from her throwing sword to blast the Namestone free.
> 
> I’d forgotten the Screaming Skull, even when he’d said something to me.  Over-focus is very dangerous in combat, but at this point I was outnumbered close to twenty to one. He used the same moment to launch his personal attack, the Shower of Total Death.  Being attacked by the League of Nations Elite Team was bad news, but the Skull is a Lord of Eternity.  His attack? It works on people, it works on a tree, and now I’d see if it works on me.  I’ve actually never been positive my second level shields do anything.  It’s not there are a lot of second level attacks wandering around to test them against.  Shields did fine.  Then Valkyria’s katana hit me. Of course, I’ve seen starcore energy densities before, the real kind, and my shields worked just fine that time, too. It’s just I was very tired, the attacks were all incredibly powerful, and I had to go truly deep to hold my defenses against all those attacks at the same time.  For half an instant, the Skull looked surprised.  He could tell: I was not drawing on the Namestone.  He’d tried to kill me, and my personal defenses were good enough to stop him in his tracks.
> 
> I did not give them a second chance. I flicked my wrist back. Namestone vanished.  I teleported out, far far away, all the way to the Dark Side of the Moon, then a half dozen fast jumps, one triple cycle loop, and finally a pause in case someone was following me.  I'd ended someplace that looks like it could be my base.  It isn’t, but it looks really basey.  Base-like?  Pursuers who could track me, a truly rare gift, would see I had stopped moving and charge after me.  I hadn't hurt anyone yet, but if someone followed my jumps they'd learn how good I am at wrecking things.  That’s very good at wrecking things.  Wrecking pursuers, in particular. I had no pursuers.  I waited until the teleport traces vanished. Fortunately, traces do not fade by becoming ever fainter.  Traces chug on and then stop dead, gone forever.  A few more jumps brought me here, my own bedroom in my very own house.  I must have dropped the Namestone into its hiding place, stripped out of my garb, and fallen into bed. I really only remember closing my balcony door.
> 
> That brought me to the here and now.  I was incredibly thirsty.  Stomach said a solid meal was in order.  I rolled out of bed, every muscle complaining, and padded to my bathroom for a glass of water.  I was more than a bit cold, but water was definitely the first priority.  Then I dropped into my down bathrobe, shoulder and ribs protesting at the motion, and headed to the kitchen, the night light throwing a feeble shadow along the stairs in front of me.  Down bathrobe?  I’d left the heat pump at standby, keeping the house temperature in the mid-50s, enough to keep pipes from freezing.  Yes, I have some neat photographs of the Pluto ruins, taken with me and camera inside my body field, but right now my gifts were very definitely turned off.  Doing the stairs was painful.  Besides the hand-to-hand combat, the Maze set other physical and mental challenges, enough to push me to all my limits.  Mum had taught me to be physically vigorous, but endurance and weight training only take you so far.
> 
> The oven clock said my half past dark was in fact only an hour past sunset.  The night light was more than enough, especially when I knew exactly where everything was stashed.  Sunset? I must have slept the day around.  No, I had woken up once and again for a glass or two of water. I’d had the foresight to cook in advance.  Cold chicken fresh off the bone, soda biscuits with unsalted butter, stir-fry curried vegetables warmed in the microwave,  more chicken and soda biscuits, milk, sliced plum tomatoes, and finally rum raisin ice cream with chocolate fudge crumbles did just fine.  I had remembered to check the bathroom scale. I had lost weight.  A fair piece of weight, even allowing I’m five-foot three in bare feet. Somehow, I continue to believe the Lesser Maze will never be a major competitor as a weight-loss machine.  Not with that casualty rate.
> 
> Very soon I was going to go back to sleep…the healing matrix said not-quite-dawn as my drift from slumber moment.  Was there anything I really had to do first? The very slightest bit of telepathy, no matter how demanding it was, confirmed ponies and barn-cats were fine.  The ponies would want currycombing tomorrow.  Dishes were rinsed and in the dishwasher.  Counters were bare.   I dragged myself up the stairs. Garb? It was in the closet, immaculately clean, not a stitch out of place. Clean?  After what had happened to it ? That must have been the Namestone, insisting that the Bearer always look perfect.  In fact, when I met Valkyria, my garb had been immaculate, down to the flawless drape of my cape.  I’d even remembered to flare the cape so the video audience could see my sigil.
> 
> Namestone?  Safe in its hidey-hole. Anything else? Rules engines, your opinions? The usual warning is that you can carry one rules engine ‘Marksman on how to shoot’, or if you’re really good a second ‘Medico on how to heal,’ but if you try four rules engines you go bats.  Mum knew how to break that limit.   I’m a working demonstration.  I have like fifty of them floating around, actually not inside my head where they’d cause problems, all being called at once.  They all had something they wanted to  tell me, but mostly they cancelled. The ones on buying and running a house were pretty calm, so far. The emergency priority flag on ‘Psychist – going bats for fun and profit’ was firmly warning me.  The Lesser Maze was too much for almost anyone, and I was building up pressure again about Mum.  Okay, I don’t know why she threw me out of the house, those six months ago, but she was right.  I can take care of myself.  I just wish I didn’t have to, not with no advance notice.  But still…and for a moment bitter tears overwhelmed me.  I washed my face, noticed I was getting cold from standing in bare feet, and went to bed.  I  pulled up the quilt and drifted off, to sleep, perchance to dream.



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